I was
for giving the gold medalists, who only wanted certificates, _bronze_
medals; and of one young girl who was in her first year and only
entitled to a bronze medal, I said: "Oh, she must have the gold medal,
of course!"
She was a queer-looking child, handsome, with a face suggesting all
manner of possibilities. When she stood up to read the speech from
"Richard II." she was nervous, but courageously stood her ground. She
began slowly, and with a most "fetching" voice, to _think_ out the
words. You saw her think them, heard her speak them. It was so different
from the intelligent elocution, the good recitation, but bad
impersonation of the others! "A pathetic face, a passionate voice, a
_brain_," I thought to myself. It must have been at this point that the
girl flung away the book and began to act, in an undisciplined way, of
course, but with such true emotion, such intensity, that the tears came
to my eyes. The tears came to her eyes too. We both wept, and then we
embraced, and then we wept again. It was an easy victory for her. She
was incomparably better than any one. "She has to work," I wrote in my
diary that day. "Her life must be given to it, and then she will--well,
she will achieve just as high as she works.
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